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Monday, January 17, 2011

Tales from the Random Pug - 4th story

The fact that I haven't been doing many random pugs since the release of Cata has led to me not ending up in many random pug-fails either. But as soon as you start doing them again, they occur. I must say though, overall my random pugs are doing just great. People are polite enough and do what they should. On the other hand I am mostly doing normals on my lowbies, and you can do them pretty much like you did Wrath heroics - just burn them through. Your healer and tank needs to be a little more skilled perhaps, but you don't need people to cc, or follow special marks. You barely even have to use any special tactic. I haven't found a single group yet that have stacked properly for the Meteor in BRC. Boy are some people going to get a suprise when they get to heroics. But I suppose heroics will go that path sooner or later too, it's inevitable.
And what I am going to present here isn't really a fail either. The run went just smoothly, no one was being an asshat, no one died etcetera. We did have one small issue however. The healer hadn't brought any mana drinks and didn't seem to know how to heal mana conservatively. In fact when I checked he rather seemed to heal like back in Wrath. You know with Flash Heal being the main heal, keeping PoM up every cd and he even topped it off with using Sanctuary even when there were only one person who was damaged.

I can accept one of theseissues - I don't mind if people have forgot to buy water, I do that too sometimes. Neither do I mind if people heal wastefully, yet again, I do that too sometimes. But I do mind when people combine these two, because that means alot of uneccesary downtime. I was tanking, and I wasn't taking -that- much damage. He could easily have kept me alive with the good old Heal spam-a-roo, and it would've saved us a lot of mana breaks of waiting around for him to regen enough, since he didn't have any water to drink.

Ok I tried to do it really nice, but I suppose I didn't quite succeed. But I still have to point out that linking all your achievement of the -last- expansion won't say much. It reminds me of all them people who go "oh yeah? But I have 3 level 80s!" when you try to tell them they're doing something the wrong way. I had 12 level 80's at one point, so if IQ was calculated by the amount of chars one had leveled to max level, I'd be Stephen Hawking. It doesn't really matter how skilled you have been, or even are right now. You might still be doing something wrong. You might -still- need some advice. Actually, you're only a truly skilled player if you at least take some consideration to the fact that you might need some advice now and then.
I do not claim to be the best priest player. I do not know everything there is about healing, and even if I did I don't always execute it perfectly. It is my goal, and in a way I am glad I haven't achieved it yet, since it probably would make the game rather dull if I never had something to work on. Just the other day I learned that the Reflective Shield talent only works on shields cast on yourself, so even for me, who has played a priest for some 4 years, there are areas in which I know far from everything. Especially when there is a new expansion and everything is thrown upside down. I hope people will give me advice when they notice I am doing something wrong or could do something better. Kind of like when you've got a booger in your nose, you'll be ashamed of having it there when someone points it out, but wouldn't it be even worse if you just kept walking around with it there? Playing WoW should be the same way. We might think we know something, but wouldn't we be happier if we learned something completely new that made us better players, even if it at first would feel embarrassing?

So you killed Lich King? I bet you're an awesome healer, *pats on head*. In fact you kept us all alive in the instance so you were doing just fine. My tanking wasn't awesome either. But that still doesn't cover the fact that you could've healed more efficiently and saved us time. A truly good healer would've noticed that, or at least acknowledged it.

5 comments:

I have the very same issue whenever I'm trying to give some advice. I'm always trying to be nice, but it doesn't work (mainly becouse of my english style). What should I do in raid situation when someone has problems with certain boss fight / healing assignment? Should I try to give some advice, if I know how to fix the problem or should I leave it to raid leader(s) and role leader(s)? [Or something totally different perhaps?]

I lolled reading that advice screenshot. That last line is really a side-splitting joke. Unbelievable that such a dude has such nice titles, I can only dream of those..., oh wait I'm a Kingslayer too, am I marvelous now? They probably didn't mentioned him (I guess it was a guy) during those 25 mans and I pity the other 9 in the 10 mans.I only healed norms in Cata so far (almost hit L85 now) but one thing is realy clear. In a dedicated patient group you can heal almost constantly without downtimes by mainly using Chakra and Heal with some incidental other heals while in a rushy impatient group you've to replenish much and/or even get OOM in no time. Guess what's faster. Anticipating on the future, I'm gonna maximise my Combat regen, drilling my Shadow fiend, Keep HoH nearby and stack Mana potions to the max.

I would suggest starting your suggestion with a question really, something like:1) Hey, nice healz thx, but do you think you can heal us as good while being a bit more mana efficient so that we can progress a little faster?

That should trigger a response, and you can from then on start making the actual suggestions.

@GabbekIn a raid it is something special, because you are raiding with people whom you, in most cases, know and meet in a regular basis. In a pug you have to tread more carefully. You will probably never meet the guy again and he has no reason to be polite or listen to you besides having that hour run more smoothly. Unfortunately that is rarely anough of an incitament for politeness. In raids I definitely think you should take it to the class leaders, people are bad at taking critique no matter how you say it. Trust me I know ;) But if it comes from someone with the guilds authority to "whine" one can hope they listen.

@AsverzeI can just hope this feller will get his when he gets into heroics/raids with that attitude...

@FlorianYeah I had the totally wrong approach. First rule: Don't give advice to someone publicly, it will only humiliate them.Second rule: Like you say, smoothen things up with some flattering before you subtly suggest some improvements.

"Yeah that's really cute :P". lol. You are hilarious. I bet what you wanted to say was "Yeah, yeah, you can stop that. My priest has all of that stuff too. Got any from Cata, yet? No? Okay then listen to my advice for a sec and stfu."

Giving advice is always a good thing. No matter how you word it though, some people will be jerks about it. Why? Because it implies that they are doing something wrong or performing badly. And while it may be true, people don't like hearing that.

So they can either accept the fact that they could be doing better, listen to the advice and possibly improve, or they can deny that they're doing anything wrong and keep living in their happy glowing marshmellow land where they're the best player ever and you have no idea what you're talking about and they say jerky things to you. A lot of people choose the second option because, hey, happy glowing marshmellow land rocks.

About Me

I'm Zinn, former healing priest extraordinaire of WoW, which I played between April 2005- April 2013. Nowadays I spend my days playing other games, reading loads of stuff and writing the occassional blog post about it. Enjoy!